Borg Tactical Cube
The Borg Cube is the most common ship design used be the Collective. They are the mighty gigantic dreadnaughts of the Borg fleet with a volume of 28 cubic kilometers and spanning more than 3,000 kubic kilometers on every side making it a true embodyment of the Borg's merciless mentality and cold efficiency. Housing enough Borg drones to assimilate a planet and weaponry so powerful Borg cubes often face entire armadas emerging victorious and often unscathed. Its function in the Collective is to destroy or assimilate all worthy unassimilated vessels and stations it encounters. Vessel Design 'General Operation' Borg cubes are infact closer to traveling city ships than starships however despite their enormous size 50% of the internal volume is unoccupied and empty space, A miniscule 0.2% of it's internal mass are actual walls and floors wutg the rest being alchoves, corridoors, on-board facilities, hangar bays and various other vital systems. Forgoing such irrelevencies as lights, cantinas, personal quarters (sonic showers, food replicators, personal computers), holodecks, turbo-lifts, stairs, internal com system and an interactive voice-activated computer system. In doing so the vessel saves a great deal of power which is re-routed in-to other more vital systems such as weapons and shields, significantly increasing their effectiveness. Each drone which is no longer required or of whom is running low on power simply return to their regeneration alchoves and due to the massive crew compliment, drones are not required to leave their assigned deck however may also do so using the ships transporters. The interior of a Cube consist of thousands of catwalks, walkways, hangar bays, pipes and conduits lined with Borg alchoves. Cubes possess a generalised interior design, there are no specific bridge, living areas or engineering sections and due to all drones possessing equal technical knowledge and maintanence capabilities, simply the closest drones to a malfunctioning system are assigned. Disimillar to the design of all other races, Borg vessels possess no particular exit or entry hatches from the exterior to the interior of the vessel as the entire ship is essentially open to the vacuum of space. The interior pressure of the Cube is however maintained by high energy forcefields and structural integrity fields with multiple redundencies. 'Combat' The very appearance of the cube is designed to be cold and intimidating, its colossal size dwarfing even the mightiest of battleships. Despite the unusual design of using symmetrical geometric shapes, there is also a great deal of logic and many advantages in doing so. Each side is identically armed and armored, denying enemy species the luxury of any directional weaknesses in defenses and blind spots in firing arcs. It's collosal size also negating the practicality of suicide attacks performed against the enormous Cube. An additional benefit of the generalised interior design is the aspect of presenting no particularly beneficial and specifically vulnerable targets of which enemy vessels may focus attacks upon. As a result of the vessels highly decentralized design and endless redundencies the ships vital functions may be run from any part of the ship, resulting in a Borg Cube being capable of remaining operative even if up to 80% of the vessel is destroyed. Interior Architecture Generic Interior cubeinterior.jpg|Interior of a Borg Cube. Borginterior.jpg|Interior corridoor filled with interfaces and alchoves. Borgalchove.jpg|Drone standing in a Borg alchove. Transwarp Chamber transwarp coil.jpg|Internal view of the transwarp drive chamber. transwarp coil2.jpg|An exposed transwarp coil. Shield Matrix ShieldGenerator.jpg|Internal view of the Shield Matrix aboard a Borg vessel. onboard facilities maturation chamber, assimilation chamber, hangar bay Weapon Systems Disimilar to that of all other races, the Borg's weapon systems do not vary from ship class to ship class, all using identical weapons systems utilizing the latest and most efficient weapons from newly assimilated species. High Energy Disruptor Beams Tacbeam.jpg|Tactical Cube firing on U.S.S Voyager (VOY - Unimatrix Zero) High-Yield Photon Torpedos Tactorp.jpg|Tactical Cube firing a torpedo Cutting Beam A Cutting Beam is a weapon outfitted primarily to Borg scout vessels, it is an intensely powerful laser capable of instantaniously penetrating double-layers of high density duranium, tritanium armors (TNG - Best of Both Worlds). Used in comjunction with a standard tractor beam the Borg have used this beam to extract segments from ships and even planets, abducting entire cities at once. The beam is however unable to penetrate newly developed arm or designed to disperse particle weapons such as Ablative Armor. Cutting Beam.jpg|Cutting Beam slices a segment out of the Enterprise-D CuttingBeam.jpg|Cutting Beam is fired against the shieldless and helpless Enterprise-D High Energy Tractor Pulse Borg vessels utilize a High Energy Tractor Pulse (Tractor Beam) which places extreme gravitational stresses on all sides of the enemy vessel simultaniously. The magnitude of the force is tuned precisely to each ship class and vessel, once perfectly tuned the forces are insufficient to crush the vessel however sufficient to completely overwhelm the vessels impulse engines and maneuvering thrusters even if they are set to full-power they will be unable to compete against such forces. The beam also disrupts the vessels warp field, preventing it from escaping using a warp jump. Holding Beam.jpg|U.S.S Voyager held helplessly by a Borg Cube Polaron Beam Whilst not conforming to an offensive weapon in the conventional sense, Borg vessels possess a device capable of emitting an extremely focused Polaron Beam upon targeted enemy vessels, the beam is very narrow, roughly an inch in width and causes no damage, sweeping enemy vessels from starboard to port. The Polaron beam penetrates all surfaces, midly exciting the molecular particles of the surfaces it is projected upon and polarizing it at a distinct polarization frequency, which is combined with a specially calibrated sensor tied in-to the beam which detects polarization at this particular frequency. The combination of these two devices within a single scanning beam allows Borg vessel to collect information such as hull alloy density, conposition, interior vessel layout and a lifeform count. Scanning beam.jpg|Borg Cube scanning the U.S.S Voyager with a Polaron Beam (VOY - Scorpion) PolaronScan.jpg|Polaron Beam sweeping the interior bridge of the U.S.S Voyager Defense Systems Internal Defense Systems Crew : One of the Cubes greatest defensive features is its enormous crew compliment, responding immediatly to malfunctioning systems or ship damage of any kind, subsiquently healing and repairing any damaged drones essentially allowing the vessel to always operate at 100% efficiency even during pro-longed battles. Whilst Borg drones are capably of responding immediately to enemy boarding parties, they do not typically do so unless specifically instructed to, deeming enemy boarding parties to be of no threat to the vessel whilst sorrounded by hundreds of thousands of drones and prevented from escaping by means of transporters as a result of the Borg's multi-adaptive shield matrix. Automated Regeneration Units : Another relatively small however extremely effective defensive feature of a Borg vessel are small spherical droids named Automated Regeneration Units, these droids speedily roam the sub-sections, shafts and conduits of Borg vessels, repairing all technology and imperfections in the tritanium infastructure within the ship adding additional response time and causing the ship to quite essentially maintain itself and its own systems. Multi-Regenerative Security Fields : These fields are emplaced within Borg vessels to protect the most vital technology from harm, preventing all forms of transporter attacks and preventing biological and technological matter from passing through however they are typically not activated until a threat has already been detected on-board. Borg drones may however walk freely through these fields. Auto-Destruct Sequence : All Borg vessels are equipped with an auto-destruct sequence which intentionally overloads the primary power systems and detonates all on-board torpedo warheads resulting in the instant destruction of the vessel. The auto-destruct sequence also intentionally sabotages all of the vital Borg technology on-boards such as the transwarp coils (VOY - Dark Frontier). External Defense Systems External Borg ship design follows a pattern of foregoing shields as a primary defensive measure in favor of relying upon extremely strong, resistant and Regenerative Hull Armor The exterior hull armor of all Borg vessels and stations have the capability of regenerating quickly and constantly, granting an enormous boost to survivability in pro-longed battles. The exterior of the Cube's hull is covered in all pipes and conduits which act like blood vessels and capillaries transporting type 03 and type 04 nanoprobes to the damaged areas, healing much like a biological body would. The creation and distribution of the nanoprobes are goverened by the ships equivilent of a heart, the Automatic Regeneration Matrix. Ablative Hull Armor As Borg vessels rely upon their hull armor to survive, the entire outer hull layer is comprised of Ablative Armor, which possesses the capability of dispersing particle weapons fire, granting extraordinary protection and resistance to even the most powerful energy weapons. Adaptive Shield System Whilst the Borg do not use shielding as a primary means of defense, Borg vessels do possess shielding for the purposes of propulsion, internal security and as a second line of defense. Adaptive Shielding casts an extremely low power force-field around the exterior of the Borg vessel which samples each particle beam which passes through. This data is recorded by the Adaptive Shield Matrix which records and remodulates the vessels primary shield grid to the counter-frequency of the opponents weapons, allowing Borg vessels and stations to become immune to that particular weapon frequency. High Level Structural Integrity Field l Propulsion Systems warp factor, transwarp mention structural integrity field to compensate for lack of aerodynamic design